


The Whisper of a Brush

by twistedchick



Category: Digger (Webcomic)
Genre: Art, Creativity, F/M, Gen, Little Mother of Earthquakes, Reminiscence, Writing on Skin, hyena tribal culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:55:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21754102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: Boneclaw Mother may not see now, but she remembers.
Relationships: Boneclaw Mother/ Owl Caller
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Whisper of a Brush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [batrachian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batrachian/gifts).



Back then, so many moons and seasons ago, I could still see a little. My memory of what I saw hasn’t faded, despite some of the tribe’s belief that I’m a senile old woman. But they also believe I can see through these stones on my mask, which makes them behave a bit better in my presence and, I hope, beyond my presence as well.

It’s all one can hope for these days, decent behavior, especially when it concerns the tribe, most of whose members have never been known for their skill in etiquette. Tradition tells us that proper behavior can save lives, though a bit of poison under the claws helps sometimes. Do they listen? Maybe.

I knew that the little skin painter would be something special, from when he was a baby. He would pick up stones and sticks and look at them, turn them over, babbling excitedly about the shapes and patterns and colors he saw. Fierce Ears, his mother, found that he would wander off readily to chase whatever he thought looked pretty but, once she handed it to him, he would sit down and play with it for hours. 

So this one day she asked her brother, Owl Caller, to look after him while she was hunting. Owl Caller took a nap – he’d been up for hours the night before, making poultices for my sister, Boldclaw, who had fallen and tripped over her spear while hunting, and the spear turned and sliced her leg up. (Good thing her name wasn’t Sharp Eyes, she’d never have heard the end of it. As it was, she risked being renamed Stumblefoot for a while, till she killed that boar singlehandedly and then nobody made jokes.) Anyway, the leg was already festering when she came back from the hunt, and Owl Caller was known for being able to make infection go away and help people survive bad wounds. 

As I was saying, the morning after he made poultices for Boneclaw, Owl Caller was sitting in the sun, minding the child, and he dozed off -- and woke up with his legs from the knees down covered in designs and patterns. Granted, the designs were different colors of mud and fell out of his fur easily when he moved, but the boy’s artistic ability was evident. When Fierce Ears returned, happy with her kill of a fat deer, she laughed to see Owl Caller’s remaining decorations. She hugged her little one, and agreed with Owl Caller that the child should be apprenticed to a skin painter when he was a bit older. At that time the tribe had an elderly skin painter, who was glad to have a new apprentice, someone who would not only learn the skills and techniques but who would be willing to make his tea and help him out of his chair when his leg fell asleep.

And so the boy became an apprentice, and painted beautifully, and all was well in the world, as much as it ever is.

(Did I see the patterns? Not really. Owl Caller traced them on my legs with a gentle fingertip when we were in bed together the next night. By then they’d all fallen off him, and he’d brushed down the fur to get rid of the last few bits of mud, which he said made him itch. But I let the boy paint me, later on, and I could understand why Owl Caller fell asleep. The feel of a brush on one's skin, the sound it makes when it touches fur, can be so soothing.)

When it was time to give the boy his adult name, the name he would be known by in the world, we named him Dreamer. It was a good name. He painted designs only he had seen before, and even though they were new and not traditional they fitted with the tradition very well. Dreamer lived and breathed for his art; well, there are far worse things to live and breathe for than making the world a bit more beautiful. He learned to make his own paints, from grinding different kinds of rocks and mixing them with fats or oils, and his own brushes. Along the way, Owl Caller took Dreamer under his elbow (you thought I was going to say wing, didn’t you?) and taught him herbcraft, so that he would be able to take care of himself wherever he went. He learned which plants would make him stronger, which would keep injuries from festering, and which ones made his paints brighter and longer-lasting. He was a good student, I could tell. Owl Caller told me privately that if Dreamer hadn’t been such a good artist, he would have wanted to take him on as an apprentice himself. But double apprenticeships weren’t a tradition of the tribe, and the gods know we must follow our traditions, so he couldn’t do that. And, truly, it might have been too much for one small apprentice, though he soaked up learning like a kedivar bush after the rains.

I suspect all that Owl Caller taught him helped him, later.

Dreamer had one other gift, which I noticed before the others did. Whoever he painted before a hunt came back unharmed and with food. Whoever he painted before a battle – and yes, we did have the occasional run-in with those batbrained monks, wild trolls, and the occasional foray by another tribes’ hunting party who decided to disrespect the boundaries – came back healthy and whole. 

I said nothing in public. I only interfered a little, by suggesting to some of the tribe’s younger or less-able fighters that they might ask for a small bit of art from Dreamer before they went out to hunt, for luck. Some of them did, and they came back uninjured, with whatever bird or beast they’d gone looking for. 

Over time, this caught the eye of the more able fighters.

Painting isn’t just an art, it’s a trade. It’s like herbcraft. Owl Caller might stay up all night making poultices and tea for wounds, or helping the midwife with a difficult birth – and She Is knows we have many of those – but those who are helped owe him something. Sometimes it’s food, sometimes it’s word of a new patch of heatherbrush or squibnit, both of which are valuable medicinal herbs, I’ve been told. I’ve picked up a little knowledge of plants since Owl Caller started coming over for dinner and staying for breakfast, as you might say.

Soon Dreamer wasn’t just painting wards and sigils on the hunters but decorating the outsides of their hogans as well. His fame spread, and since we were at peace with a few other tribes, they invited him to come and visit, to paint their people for luck, and decorate whatever else he saw fit to do based on his dreams. They paid him with gifts, with better food, with whatever they had.

And he was happy. He hummed and sang little songs to himself while he worked, and word of his skills and his happy nature spread even further.

Maybe it was inevitable that the strongest and most powerful of our women would ask him for art. Maybe it was inevitable that the very strongest would want him as a mate, and that all the rest of that sad story would happen.

Maybe the gods were messing with our lives again. How else could He Is have been freed?

Oh, how I wish, more than anything else, that Owl Caller and I had found some way to bend the tribe’s rules, to stay in touch, to make sure little Dreamer was well. I could not tell Little Mother of Earthquakes how grateful I was that she had become his friend, though I think she understood. She is the most unlikely creature, but a better daughter to me than I could have expected, all things considered.

Little Mother of Earthquakes came into our lives without warning. I suspect she was sent by the one whose namesake she is, the great Mother of Earthquakes, to free He Is, though she did not know it at the time. I would not say this to the tribe, for they would not understand, but she has the liver and courage of a hyena, and the cleverness as well. She came into our lives and became one of our own, if only for honor’s sake, but it was a good day when it happened, because she understands honor, and the need at times for desperate action.

And that is why I had Owl Caller paint my claws with his strongest poison, and I led the fighters down to the stand-off between the monks and that one brave injured girl, who was determined to hold them off regardless of her own life, just to give the Little Mother of Earthquakes and our lost Dreamer the time and chance to do what needed to be done, to free our imprisoned god and send him on his way. I was glad I did not have to kill Jhalm, troublesome as he was. I didn’t need to have his gods interfering in our lives as well. 

Wooden Ganesh, being wise, gives comfort and advice and does not interfere with us, though I think he, too, was grateful for what my odd daughter and my friend’s nephew accomplished there, in the dark under the world. 

May She Is look kindly upon our Dreamer, friend to Little Mother of Earthquakes, who gave him a name to replace what had been taken away. May She Is be good to Ed, and if there is rebirth may his next life be kinder to him than this one was. And may my unlikeliest daughter finally find her way back to her home, with my blessing and my eternal thanks.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to zlabya and sparks, who betaed this. And even more thanks to Ursula Vernon, for bringing Boneclaw Mother, Owl Caller, Ed and Digger to life.


End file.
